Research Critique 4
Media: The Hindu
For my media research critique, I decided to report on a news article I found from The Hindu, a media news website and print newspaper in India. The article is entitled, “Suicide prevention training program launched.” I was delighted to see in the title that there has been efforts made to help with suicide prevention. When I first heard Dr. Attur’s lecture and how the suicide rate is so high in India, especially with adolescents, it really struck me. I was wondering what I could do or what the community could do to help prevent adolescent suicide. Dr. Attur discussed with us the goal of building resilience in children and nurturing schools. He mentioned that they do programs in schools to educate administration, teachers, children, and parents on promoting a healthy mental state and well-being. After hearing about this, I thought it seemed like a great idea, and I think it will be beneficial in schools. While I was researching further into adolescent suicide and the suicide prevention, I found this article. In the article, the author stated that Collector S. Natarajan started a suicide prevention training program for school teachers. He also released stickers, which displays toll free phone numbers for students to call if they are under stress and want to seek counseling. The picture above is Mr. Natarajan addressing the training program, which was organized by the school education department and the district child protection unit at Syed Ammal Matriculation Higher Secondary School. While addressing the training participants, he stated that teachers play a crucial role in helping and protecting adolescent students. Teachers can have a big influence on children, and they can help prevent them from committing suicide. They can try to be there for support and try to help them reframe their mindsets. Teachers can help the students as they face stress due to various factors.
Dr. Attur shared with us a video that he created with South Asia Self Harm Initiative (SASHI) Project, as a way to build awareness and prevent adolescent suicides. In the video, it was stated that suicides increase during exams and results times, showing how impactful the results can be. They mentioned in the video that they want to share the saying and “hashtag:” #youfirstmarksnext. This means that you as a person and an individual come first. If a student fails his or her exams, he or she should remember that it is okay and accepted. They should try not to let it consume them and think they are a complete failure and commit suicide. This video was created to help spread the word that it will be okay if they do not perform well. It does not mean it should be the end. In the video, they also discuss how parents and family can place a lot of pressure on their children to do well on exams. It can cause more stress for the children and make them feel guilty if they do not perform well.
During the suicide prevention training program, the Collector, Mr. Natarajan, stated that children go through many changes, physically and mentally during adolescence, around the age group of 8 years old to 18 years old. Many of the children go through stress and have negative thoughts, which could continue and escalate into committing suicide. Teachers working with the students can help by identifying children that seem overly stressed with negative thoughts and counsel them. Dr. J Periyar Lenin, the coordinator for the district mental health program, spoke to the teachers and gave them tips for how to identify students who were under stress and seemed anxious or depressed. He talked about how they should intervene. In the article, they also mentioned how in the existing educational system, it is competitive between students and they tend to compare themselves to each other. This could lead to negative thoughts as well. To prevent children from ending their lives, parents, teachers, and professionals can counsel and support them during this phase of their lives.
This article is relevant to my experience because it aligns with what I have been learning in India. I learned of the suicide rates and the need for suicide prevention programs. It is relevant to my experience also because I am a student also, and I know how it feels to be stressed for exams. I take it seriously, but I know that I should not be so hard on myself if I do not perform as well academically as I had hoped. I also have experience as a teacher in the United States. For me, it was difficult to juggle everything that I had to do as a teacher. Teachers have to be knowledgeable about the curriculum and write lesson plans as well as teach the lessons and make sure the children are learning. Besides make sure they are learning, it is also important to try to notice if any children do not seem to be in a healthy mental state and counsel them. So, they do have a lot on their shoulders. When I was a teacher, administration would also pressure the teachers into ensuring that the children do well academically on their standardized tests. This would stress me out as a teacher, and I am sure stress from the teachers will also fall to the students as well. I am not sure in India if there is also pressure on the teachers, but I think that it is great that a training program for teachers was conducted because it means they recognize that teachers can help counsel the students and should not pressure them more.
After reading this article, it did raise some questions about the global health issue of adolescent suicide. My first question would be: Why does there need to be a suicide prevention training program? The article did not state it, but the suicide rates in India are high for adolescents. Student suicides have increased in India from 5.5% of all cases in 2010 to 6.2% in 2013 (Ponnudurai, 2015). Suicide prevention education and training programs are needed in India, as India is labeled the “Suicide capital of Southeast Asia in 2012, based on a report by the World Health Organization (Ponnudurai, 2015). The suicide rate has increased from 7.8 in 1967 to 11.0 in 2013 (Ponnudurai, 2015). There are many suicides occurring in India, with a shift recently in the predominance of the number of suicides from the elderly to the young people all over the world. It has been noticeable in India, with India having the world’s largest youth population of 356 million. There was also a report by the Indian government in 1999 which showed that more than 65% of all suicides are committed by persons between the ages of 15 to 24 years old.
Another question I would raise is: Why is this a global health issue? Why is the suicide rate high? According to Ponnudurai (2015), adolescents have many stressors and emotional turmoil as they are starting to reach the threshold of adulthood. Some of the stressors are poor scholastic performance, more parental expectations to succeed and do well on exams. Sometimes, they are also getting into relationships before they are mature enough to handle them. All of these stressors create more pressure on the adolescents. Parents’ over expectations on their child’s academic achievement and criticism on their child’s underperformance could be contributing factors for suicidal behavior (Ponnurdurai, 2015). Findings also show that students with a parent not alive and students who mothers were employed were at a higher risk for suicidal thoughts and behavior. These findings show the importance of parents’ support and their availability to help their adolescents with overcoming many different stressors. Vijaykumar (2007) stated that suicide is a personal and individual act, but suicidal behavior is caused by both individual and social factors. Suicide is a public and mental health problem that demands action (Vijaykumar, 2007). These are reasons why it is beneficial that a suicide training program was launched in India. The article stated that teachers were trained from a variety of schools, and they can share the information with other teachers in their school. After the training programs are implemented across schools in India, my next question would be: Have adolescent suicide rates decreased? Have rates of mental illness for children decreased? That would be an answer I could look into further and that could be conducted.
Effective actions I might take in response to this article is to try to help with this global health issue. I could help spread the awareness of suicide prevention and mental health by telling friends and even trying to share with the community about this issue. In this case, a few classmates of mine, Isabella, Chavely, and Juliana, and I decided to start a global health campaign to raise funds for a suicide prevention training program for teachers in India. Dr. Attur works with the non profit organization, FRAME, to spread awareness and education on mental health. You can find more information about our global health campaign and the video by SASHI, #youfirstmarksnext, on my Global Health Campaign page. I hope that the training program conducted in the article will be helpful to the teachers and children, and I hope that more training and education programs will keep being implemented across India.
References
News article from The Hindu: https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/suicide-prevention-training-programme-launched/article22840
Ponnudurai, R. (2015). Suicide in India – changing trends and challenges ahead. Indian Journal
of Psychiatry, 57(4), 348. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.171835
Vijaykumar, L. (2007). Suicide and its prevention: The urgent need in India. Indian Journal of
Psychiatry, 49(2), 81. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.33252